A Texas man was executed Thursday for the brutal killing of his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter, a crime he and his partner disturbingly described as part of an “exorcism” meant to drive a demon from the child’s body.
Blaine Milam, 35, was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was convicted for the December 2008 death of Amora Carson at his trailer in Rusk County, East Texas.
It was one of two executions carried out that evening in the U.S. In Alabama, Geoffrey West was executed with nitrogen gas for fatally shooting a gas station worker during a 1997 robbery.
Milam had tried to shift blame to his then-girlfriend, Jesseca Carson, claiming she was the one who believed the child was possessed. Carson was tried separately, convicted of capital murder, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Both were 18 at the time of the crime.
Prosecutors said Milam brutally attacked the toddler over a span of 30 hours—beating her with a hammer, biting her, strangling her, and inflicting other horrific injuries.
A forensic pathologist testified that Amora’s body showed multiple skull fractures, broken arms, legs, ribs, and numerous bite marks. The extent of the trauma was so severe that the pathologist could not pinpoint a single cause of death.
Milam was the fifth person executed this year in Texas, the state that historically leads the nation in capital punishment. With Thursday’s executions in Texas and Alabama, the nationwide total for 2025 reached 33. Florida currently leads with a record 12 executions so far this year, with two more scheduled by mid-October.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Milam’s final appeals. His attorneys argued his conviction relied in part on “now-discredited” bite mark evidence and questionable DNA findings. They also contended that he was intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office countered that his disability claims had been rejected in earlier rulings, and that even without the disputed forensic evidence, other proof—including attempts to cover up the crime and a confession to a nurse—confirmed his guilt.
Bite mark analysis has increasingly come under scrutiny. A 2016 report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found the practice to be “clearly scientifically unreliable at present.”
Rusk County District Attorney Micheal Jimerson, who prosecuted the case with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, said authorities initially believed Milam and Carson were grieving parents. That view changed after Carson revealed Milam claimed Amora was “possessed by a demon” because “God was tired of her lying to Milam,” according to court records.
Jimerson later reflected that the so-called exorcism may have been nothing more than a cover story.
“It’s very hard to confront the idea that someone would derive their gratification from the torture of a baby,” Jimerson said in 2019. “That is really something that diminishes all of us and it’s just a very, very hard thing to face.”
On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Milam’s final request to commute his sentence. His previous execution dates in 2019 and 2021 had been stayed, but this time, the punishment was carried out.
